Zoo New: Holiday Lights

3D projections and interactive displays glee up the LA Zoo's spritely season.

Angelenos don't get many chances to say that they need to "bundle up" for something. Oh, we might bundle up some magazines or newspapers, to donate, or bundle cable services, but as far as traditional bundling, as in putting on a coat, scarf, and hat?

Yeah. This isn't a city that's ever going to be inside the Polar Vortex lines on the U.S. map. Ever.

LA is, in fact, the original Non-Bundle-Up Zone (tm), except when our large-scale outdoor events arrive in December. And SoCalers have a new place to sport those rarely donned scarves this holiday season: The Los Angeles Zoo, which is introducing its new LA Zoo Lights on Friday, Nov. 28.

Nope, the hippos won't suddenly be awash in a red-and-green-glow from a couple of light bulbs. Rather, the elaborate after-dark event includes lasers, 3D projections, and "spectacular sets."

And while many of the resident animals may be asnooze, a group of animated LED monkeys will entertain visitors throughout the zoo, with stops by musical pink flamingos and an origami rhino.

Animated. LED. Monkeys. Surely that's just what our previous yuletide celebrations have been missing, but we aim to correct that oversight this year.

Other merriments will fill out the bundle-up-and-stroll to-do, which may bring to mind past walks through Griffith Park, when the Department of Water and Power put on its holiday Christmas light displays.

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The zoo's new spectacle, though, is quite different from that longtime-gone event, though it isn't too far from the old DWP path. Think story, think fictional beasties, think lasers -- we know, we mentioned the lasers already, but lasers! -- and think of a chance to hat-and-glove-up for a nighttime, slightly chilly seasonal to-do.

Okay, the gloves might be a bit much, but we SoCalers'll take our bundling where we can get it. And if LED animated monkeys are involved? Score.

LA Zoo Lights is on at the LA Zoo from Nov. 28 through Jan. 4 (note: The event is closed on Dec. 24 and 25).

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